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		<title>This laptop sucks already. &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2018/01-January/17.xhtml&gt;</title>
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		<header>
			<h1>This laptop sucks already.</h1>
			<p>Day 01047: <time>Wednesday, 2018 January 17</time></p>
		</header>
<section id="priorities">
	<h2>Managing priorities</h2>
	<p>
		It&apos;s hard to manage priorities when there&apos;s so much that needs to be done and so little time to do it in.
		I kind of freaked out and thought I needed to escape my stupid job, but that should really be the least of my concerns right now.
		First and foremost, I have a shift leader right now that said they&apos;d teach me how to drive.
		I don&apos;t know when I&apos;ll have another opportunity, since I don&apos;t have any family in the area beyond my parents and Vanessa.
		Vanessa&apos;s too young to be a driving teacher and she&apos;s just learning to drive herself, not to mention she&apos;ll be moving out of the area soon.
		My mother had her chance, she&apos;s moving soon with Vanessa, and she&apos;s really obnoxious on the road.
		I&apos;m not sure I could stand to have her teach me.
		And if I have my father teach me and my mother ever found out, my mother would freak out.
		So basically, due to my mother&apos;s toxicity, I can&apos;t learn from either parent.
		I can&apos;t afford to leave my job until I take my shift leader up on their offer and I have my driver license.
		I need to do this between terms when I have time though.
		I don&apos;t think I should try to learn in only two weeks for my own benefit, not to mention that I don&apos;t want to take away all their time off the clock, so I should probably wait until the next break, which means I should spend the coming term at my current job, use the break to learn, spend the next term there too, and only <strong>*then*</strong> spend a break looking for a job.
		I can deal with my job a while longer, and I don&apos;t even know where I want to work yet anyway.
	</p>
	<p>
		Perhaps more urgently though, I need to get organised as I said before, both physically and digitally.
		I need to do well in school, and I can&apos;t do that if I&apos;m working through a mess.
		The virtual mess slows my coursework completion, while the physical mess slows a lot of other things, so it takes longer to even get to coursework.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="meta">
	<h2>Rehashing old memories</h2>
	<p>
		As I continued the website clean-up project today, I ran across a bizarre dream I&apos;d written about.
		One passage was particular amusing because of how ill-behaved my mother was being:
	</p>
	<blockquote cite="/en/weblog/2016/12-December/12.xhtml#dreams">
		<p>
			Before I could get laundry started, in an actual washing machine too, I got called away to a celebratory dinner.
			Along the way, we were told that the meal would be all organic, at which point my mother showed up and tried to convince everyone that I choose what I eat out of hatred, and that I hate meat.
			They then tried to convince them that I also hate eggs, but only sometimes.
			Other times, I do eat them.
			I had to explain that no, I never eat eggs, but my mother kept contradicting this.
			Then my mother started questioning me about my policy on tomatoes, which I of course don&apos;t have.
			After I explained this, my mother said that I <strong>*should*</strong> have a policy on tomatoes, because tomatoes are known to cause diabetes and cancer.
			In fact, all plants are known to cause some sort of health problem.
			I wasn&apos;t sure what to do with this information though, as I&apos;m not vegan for health reasons; this wouldn&apos;t convince me not to eat plants.
			Furthermore, meat is known to raise the risk of cancer as well.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		For context on that first sentence, this was during a period I had no access to a washing machine or dryer.
		I was washing all my clothing by hand in the real world.
		I have no other notes though, the rest speaks for itself.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve finished work in the journal, and all that remains are some learning journal pages which won&apos;t be seen for several years.
	</p>
	<p>
		My website code could be a lot cleaner if I set up a proper templater.
		I&apos;ve known this for quite a while, perhaps since near the beginning.
		The only problem&apos;s been that I haven&apos;t had any clue how to build one.
		Today, I slowly worked over the problem, and with what I&apos;ve learned over the past few years, something&apos;s finally clicked into place.
		I came up with the beginnings of a system, and as I refined the idea, it pretty much turned into a variant of <a href="https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.strtr.php"><code>\strtr()</code></a> wrapped in an object.
		In fact, I think I can use <code>\strtr()</code> directly for my purposes.
		If not, very little extra effort will likely be needed to create whatever wrapper I need.
		I could certainly build a more featureful and problem-specific wrapper around this even if not strictly necessary, but I&apos;m not sure I could justify the overhead using it would generate.
		The translation of old pages will be a beast.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="laptop">
	<h2>A new laptop</h2>
	<p>
		The Linux laptops at the recycling centre were twice as expensive as last time; and there were two instead of one.
		When I asked what they recommended, I was told the only differences between the two was that one had a slightly better processor and came with Ubuntu, while the other had a slightly worse processor and came with Linux Mint.
		They said the difference in processors was so slight that I should choose based on operating system.
		I said I choose Debian, and that I&apos;d install that myself when I got home, so they said to get the one with the better processor, then they checked for disk drives, and found the Linux Mint one didn&apos;t have one anyway.
		I guess they thought I&apos;d install via <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> instead of <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr>, but still, I&apos;d prefer to have a <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> drive over not having one, and the two machines were identically priced.
		I wouldn&apos;t even save money by not having a <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> drive.
	</p>
	<p>
		I got it home and found the Wi-Fi card predictably wouldn&apos;t play nicely with Debian.
		I&apos;d have to swap it out.
		Unfortunately, it needs the smaller-sized Wi-Fi card, which was currently in <a href="/en/domains/bailey.local.xhtml"><code>bailey</code></a>.
		I won&apos;t be able to have both laptops usable at once.
		It was vital that I try the Wi-Fi card in <code>tracy</code> today though, to make sure there wasn&apos;t some noxious <abbr title="Basic Input/Output System">BIOS</abbr> <abbr title="digital restrictions management">DRM</abbr> that&apos;d prevent the card from being installed later, not to mention that it&apos;d be nice to have Debian already installed when I end up needing this machine.
		When I opened up <code>bailey</code> to get the card, I found there&apos;s a second Wi-Fi card slot, and it takes a card of the bigger size.
		However, that slot doesn&apos;t seem to be operational.
		I installed my other Wi-Fi card there, but the system doesn&apos;t seem to recognise that a Wi-Fi card&apos;s installed.
		Too bad.
		<code>tracy</code> accepts the small Wi-Fi card though, so I can switch over as long as I&apos;m willing to knock <code>bailey</code> offline to do so.
		I need to figure out how to get more of these Debian-compatible laptop Wi-Fi cards.
	</p>
	<p>
		The Wi-Fi issue was only the first of several problems though.
		The live system I tested <code>tracy</code>&apos;s Wi-Fi capabilities with worked fine.
		However, once installed, the machine couldn&apos;t find the operating system.
		Joy.
		I did some searching on my borked mobile to see if Debian can even run on this machine.
		Surely I wasn&apos;t the only one having troubles, but surely, if Ubuntu could allow itself to be found, so could Debian.
		I found nothing helpful (or at least helpful <strong>*yet*</strong>), but I found some information on problems experienced with these machines on Debian 8.
		Mostly, Wi-Fi is said not to work without nonfree drivers and the machine&apos;s built-in graphics card is said to cause a system crash upon booting unless a bunch of hoops are jumped through.
		Lovely.
		I couldn&apos;t even get that far though.
		I tried messing with the <abbr title="Basic Input/Output System">BIOS</abbr> to disable a newer boot system option.
		I forget what it&apos;s called, but I think it works in place of the master boot record or something.
		I&apos;m pretty sure I managed to disable it and when I tried installing the system again, <abbr title="Grand Unified Bootloader">GRUB</abbr> got installed to the master boot record instead of whatever it was installed to before.
		Rebooting, the system started up.
		Sort of.
		It crashed on Debian 9, as the article I&apos;d read said it does on Debian 8.
		I&apos;d already bypassed the Wi-Fi issue by replacing the Wi-Fi card with a better one, so now it was time to fix this issue too.
	</p>
	<p>
		The instructions say I&apos;ve got to install the system without a desktop, tinker with some configuration files, then install the desktop.
		If a desktop is installed before the settings are fixed, the system will crash.
		The article said it has something to do with the machine&apos;s <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/HP/EliteBook%208470p%20or%208570p"><q cite="https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/HP/EliteBook%208470p%20or%208570p">poorly documented, offbeat <abbr title="graphics processing unit">GPU</abbr></q></a>.
		I question why this crash doesn&apos;t happen on the live system, but at least a fix is available.
	</p>
	<p>
		A more-pressing question though is how do I install the system without a desktop?
		I use the live installer.
		Why do I do that?
		Because while my Wi-Fi card operates without nonfree firmware, it&apos;s broken or something.
		It disconnects from the network frequently.
		The network installer, which lets you pick and choose what components to install, isn&apos;t designed to handle network interruptions.
		At all.
		If the network connection goes down while the installer is downloading packages, the whole installation will lock up.
		From the system messages, it looks like the installer continues to try to download each package, taking quite a while to give up on each one.
		Individually.
		If I wait the <strong>*DAYS*</strong>-long process of it failing to find the packages, it might present me with an error message and let me reconfigure the network.
		Maybe.
		But of course, the Wi-Fi card will fail again, and even assuming the installer keeps what it&apos;s already downloaded between attempts (as opposed to starting over every time, which it might also do), it&apos;s only going to make a limited amount of progress in each iteration.
		Assuming packages successfully downloaded are kept between iterations, so progress can actually be made, it&apos;d take well over a month to install the system.
		It&apos;s not feasible.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve been given a lead as to what to do: use disk one of three of the full, offline installer.
		I&apos;m told the other two disks won&apos;t be needed, which is good, as I&apos;m not sure how to do a multi-disk install using a <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive.
		By the time this huge disk finishes downloading though, I hope to be asleep.
		I have a dental appointment in the morning.
		If my network connection drops while I&apos;m asleep though, I won&apos;t have the disk when I need it.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="food">
	<p>
		On the way home from the recycling centre, I stopped at the Cornbread Cafe.
		The macaroni order I got was disappointingly small, but the burger was unexpectedly large.
		The burger itself could&apos;ve been it&apos;s own full meal.
		That was the best I&apos;ve eaten in a while, and the first time I can remember being full in years.
		I should make a point of stopping there at least once during each break between terms.
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve eaten there a couple times in the past with my mother, but under her judgemental watch, I don&apos;t tent to eat much.
		Being alone, I was able to get whatever I wanted and enjoy myself.
	</p>
</section>
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			If for some reason you would prefer to modify and/or distribute this document under other free copyleft terms, please ask me via email.
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